flimflam

/ˈflɪmflæm/

flimflam is the alternative form of flim-flam.

Meaning of flim-flam

flim-flam (countable and uncountable, plural flim-flams)

Misinformation; bunkum; false information presented as true.
- Most reports of supernatural occurrences turn out to be flim-flam when carefully investigated.
Synonyms:

absurdity, all my eye, all my eye and Betty Martin, apple grease, applesauce, bafflegab, balderdash, balls, baloney, banana oil
Confidence game, con game.
- Those who got the joke understood that all of the city’s talk of ideas and principles was flimflam to conceal self-enrichment at the public’s expense. Those who didn’t, didn’t.2025 November 22, David Frum, “Marjorie Taylor Greene Came So Close to Getting the Joke”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 22 Nov 2025
(archaic) Table tennis.

flimflam (third-person singular simple present flimflams, present participle flimflamming, simple past and past participle flimflammed)

Noun
plural	flimflams
Verb
third-person singular present	flimflams
present participle	flimflamming
past participle	flimflammed
past	flimflammed

What does flimflam mean?: Flimflam means to swindle or cheat.
What is flimflam the alternative form of?: Flimflam is the alternative form of flim-flam.
What part of speech is flimflam?: Flimflam is a verb.
How do you pronounce flimflam?: Flimflam is pronounced /ˈflɪmflæm/.
What is the past tense of flimflam?: The past tense of flimflam is flimflammed.

Adapted from Wiktionary: flimflam (page history and authors); flim-flam (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-flimflam.wav.

Cite this entry: “flimflam.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flimflam. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.